Toujours
by the author formerly known as
Summary: Edward starts leading himself down a dangerous road of betrayal and drags his family down with him. edwardalice. edwardbella. an exercise in character development, nothing more, COMPLETE
1. Toujours Part I

**THIS IS AN EDWARDALICE.** It was written as nothing more than an exercise in character development and thus should be read as such.

**Toujours  
****Part I**

"You won't leave me, Edward, right?" she asked, breathing in deeply. She knew she was ready for this, ready to start a new life, but she wanted to hear him say it for her once more, as she was human, once more before the pain.

"Bella!" he exclaimed, sounding shocked. "Leave you? _Jamais_, darling, _never_. You are my world, the most important thing to me... Don't ever forget that."

* * *

Edward was having an affair– Bella wasn't entirely sure when she had realized what was going on; he treated her the same way as he always had, seemed to be just as happy to see her when she entered a room as when they first began their relationship, and hadn't been unnecessarily nasty, as if he were exhausted with her presence; neither had he been unnecessarily nice, as if every breath she took was a reminder of some wild guilt.

But Bella felt an estrangement coming to rest within their relationship. Yes, Bella knew that things had– in a way she couldn't quite place– changed between her and Edward; and after 32 years of marriage, she knew that somewhere, somehow, something had gone terribly awry. The problems had been there for awhile, but the affair, Bella knew, was recent, much more recent. Of course, she could never figure out how she knew.

It was nothing she could understand. She tried telling herself that she was imagining things, because he smelled the same, acted the same, looked the same; his crooked smile was even the same, bringing to his face the same light and happiness that it had before.

Bella gave up on excuses the night Edward had said to her, staring glumly at the moonlight filtering through the canvas of leaves above them, even as his hands twisted through loose coils of her hair and his legs were entwined with hers, "I've never loved a single person more than I love you, Bella– Not my friends, my siblings, my parents..." He smiled weakly. "_Then or now_. Not a single person."

Bella asked, "So then what's happening? What's changed?"

Edward's reply was little more than the chiming of distant bells, and it seemed to lose half of its power beneath the wailing of the wind. "I don't know. I want more than anything else just to be with you– You are, you know, my other half; my light... My reflection, in a way. I can't even care for another person; thoughts of you always come first."

Edward's gaze had never faltered from the twitching leaves on the ground around them, and the misty light which seemed to bring them to life. She saw, then, as if the image had drifted, along with the tenuous beams of brightness, down from the sky, something in Edward she had never encountered this closely, and she was never more glad for it. She wondered if it would hurt him, if he became aware that she knew he was with someone else on other nights. She didn't want to be the reason for his sadness.

What she saw was the desperate need to get within her head, the scraping knowledge that her thoughts– the true meanings of words he could not hear, were constantly beyond him. He had called her his reflection; and she wondered if in being unable to reach her in this way, he felt that he could not reach himself.

She whispered, wrapping her arms around his stomach and kissing the bare skin of his shoulder, "Do you remember Narcissus, Edward? Trying constantly to reach the beautiful face in the water, he drowned."

Edward's laugh was a bitter bark which collided with the cold night air around them, snapping through the sky like rain. "Is that what's happening, Bella? You think I'm drowning in trying to get close to you?"

What reply is there to such a question? Bella thought, am I really so wise after only these short years– and they had truly seemed like short years– that I can understand him better than I understand myself? She thought, if our love is just as strong, then why are we sinking? Where does love fade to?...

Edward's voice brushed against the leaves, the sky, the glowing moon so far, far above; it trickled like water to the core of the earth, and seemed to twist like the wind through the stones littered on the ground.

"You're wrong, Bella. I'm not drowning in my love for you; I'm choking on an inability to love others."

* * *

"Edward," she said, and the birdsong and the crashing waves so far below were like a cry of agony against her tinkling voice. "I see–"

But he already knew.

"Alice!" He kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, her hair. "Stop trying to handle the future before it happens. There are choices still to be made... Whatever lies beyond this morning is a little later on."

She said, "Edward.

"...Edward, I think this is a bad idea."

"No," he replied in his low, musical voice. "It isn't."

"Edward, I'm frightened."

"You shouldn't be," he told her as he stroked his cold fingers along her cheek. The sky was darkening as the threat of yet another rain loomed before them; the water swirled below, the thrashing tides gaping like the jaws of a waiting monster... His eyes careened away from her face and out beyond the mountains that rolled ahead, searching perhaps for some message written on the wind. For a time it seemed to her that his view stretched all the way to the floors of the forest, or maybe to the clouds and whatever they hid behind their gray forms.

His mouth twitched even as the rest of him was more still than the eyes of whatever storms were heading their way.

"Alice," he murmured. "You shouldn't worry. No matter what you see for us... you know the future doesn't scare me at all."

* * *

The way Alice and Edward began their affair was this: Alice had a vision. She saw Edward, alone on a starry, clear night, watching the leaves flutter in the wind, shivering like they knew the deepest fear. She saw, almost surreally, herself, blending with the night as she stalked towards him, a lithe, animal-like dancer approaching her partner. The curtain falls and Alice sees a new vision: but it's the same place, the same twitching tree branches; she's in Edward's arms. Their mouths are locked together, her hands caught in his hair. He presses his arms against her tiny back, pulling her tightly into him.

Alice did her best to ignore the vision– she seemed to think that it would blow away like dust on the wind, but was finding out every day afterwards that it was more like the dust that cakes your skin, gets up below your fingernails and in your eyes. She went even further out of her way not to think about it when Edward was near, wondering what sort of decision her brother had made that would change the two of them so much, wondering if she could stop him from making it if she avoided thinking about it.

They were hunting with Emmett, each gone their separate ways, each looming in different shadows, searching for the right prey. The three of them were more quiet than the night itself, so as she slunk through the trees, watching, waiting for the right moment, she never realized that Edward was just ahead. She stepped out from under the foliage at the top of a tall mountain, silent as ever, and saw him seated just the way she had already seen him so many times, hands buried in his lap, eyes intent on the forest below.

Alice approached, wanting to turn back, and Edward looked over his shoulder at her with wide, confused eyes. She saw a strange sadness in his gaze, a part of him, her very best friend for so long, that she couldn't even recognize. His scent swirled gently toward her on the breeze, and she breathed it in guiltily, thinking that she should be anywhere but here– Alice knew she was past the point of no return. She sat down next to him, not saying a word, and trying not to think any.

"What's wrong?" she finally asked, knowing his moods and nuances just as well as Jasper could have.

Edward only shook his head. He opened his mouth to say something, but no sounds came out– his lips trembled like the leaves, and his eyes trembled like the gentle wind. Alice was waiting for Edward to make his choice– to say whatever it was he was supposed to say to change things. He knew she was waiting, but she could tell by the look on his face that he knew not what she was waiting for.

"What do you expect of me?" he whispered in a sad, broken voice. "What am I supposed to _do_, Alice?"

She realized that the words fit the situation, but that it wasn't what Edward meant. There was something else going on, some problem she couldn't understand, let alone fix– but he wanted her to, expected her to. She gazed at him with a growing worry, and the wind trickled past them, blowing his hair into his eyes and making the fabric of his clothes swish against his skin. It felt like it was pushing her closer towards him, but that couldn't have been it– it was all her.

Alice had never seen Edward more alone, more upset, not even in the times when he had lost Bella. This was different– it was like despite everything, Edward still felt as if Bella was unreachable for him, as if the problem was between them, not the distance that separated... as if this bothered him even more than never seeing her face again. She thought that in becoming alienated from Bella, it seemed like Edward was growing further away from everyone else as well. Alice realized that the decision was hers to make. She didn't want to see him so depressed, and she didn't want him to feel like he was isolated from the rest of his family.

Alice shifted forward, breathing deep. Edward looked back to her face, curiously, for he had glanced away, watching an owl overhead. He stiffened as he saw the vision in her head, but Alice's lips were already against his. A moment passed and he leaned away, but her tiny figure followed, molded against him. Alice felt guilty, so guilty, thoughts straying to Jasper back home, but it didn't matter anymore– she was already past the point of no return.

* * *

There are some sins that you can justify.

Bella loved Edward, more than she loved life, more than she loved her own self, more than she cared for the very earth she lived upon.

She also hated him, and she wondered if there was any crime worse than that. She felt herself growing colder and colder with each passing day, turning from him in those moments when he seemed like a child– tiny, scared, alone... In all the moments when he seemed to need her the most. If she was there for him, it might have salvaged some part of their relationship, but Bella felt helpless to go to him. It hurt just to know that somewhere out there was another woman who he went to when looking for solace, and it stung even more to see the guiltiness that had begun, in recent days, to cast a shadow over his beautiful face.

Bella wanted to know who she was, this other woman. She pictured Edward walking down the streets of Vancouver, seeing another of their kind across the road and talking politely, coolly to her, in that offhand gentlemanly manner he was so good at. And she would picture him at a different point of time falling into the arms of that same woman, imagining her hair to be like fire, and her eyes to be like pooling blood.

She never wanted to look at Edward's face again, picturing, always, the look that may have been in his eyes some nights ago, when maybe he was off with a woman Bella didn't know, but wanted to know at the same time as she wanted to pretend away her existence. She ignored Edward, for days at a time, but she never stayed strong. She ran back to him, always hoping he would be good enough to keep on caring for her, even if he'd met someone more beautiful, more intelligent, more graceful, more _lovable_ than she.

* * *

Edward and Alice's affair could only be called such in loose terms– it was a stolen kiss every few months, when it felt like Bella and Edward were really crumbling apart, or a gentle embrace that lasted longer than it should have when Alice was too consumed with guilt even to be in Jasper's presence. It was chaste, if it was an affair at all. There was no sexual connection between them; it was all psychological. Edward wasn't going to Alice for physical release. He just needed the comfort, the emotional support it seemed like he could never find anywhere else.

Maybe that was why it felt like he was a worse traitor than Judas himself, because it wasn't even a physical need that pushed him away from Bella. It was just he himself, too scared to actually talk to her.

* * *

Edward had nowhere to turn to, no sanctuary where he could let his worries dissipate and find peace. He was like a tiny flame that clung to Bella when the wind blew by, expecting her to be his protection, his solace. Bella was the only thing he needed out of life for so long it felt like his family was a cloud drifting across the sky, moving forever farther from him. He was consumed, obsessed– he couldn't see past Bella's eyes, her hair, her full, inviting lips...

When Rosalie and Emmett went through a rocky patch that lasted over a year, fighting constantly, avoiding each other, even going so far that Rosalie almost moved out, the rest of the family showered them with support. Alice and Bella were constantly working on ways to solve the problem, Esme and Carlisle's worry was terribly apparent, and eventually, Jasper stepped in and managed to help the whole thing blow over by acting as a marriage counselor of sorts.

But Edward hadn't cared. Not in the least. He knew that seeing Emmett so depressed, no longer the grinning, obnoxious goof he always was should arouse in him some sort of sympathy. Rosalie's constant anger and bitterness should have made him feel concern for his siblings, some sort of desire to help them.

It didn't. Bella was there. She was his shield– he didn't need to go through the emotional stress of empathizing with his siblings. He just had to hide behind Bella and pretend it wasn't happening.

Eventually the knowledge that his family should have factored into his life somewhere along with her got to him, and even Bella's presence couldn't make him feel better. He was guilty, and moody, and being with Bella only made it worse. He was obsessed, thinking about her all the time, but never letting himself go to her. He wanted to learn to love again, to spend time with his siblings and not feel like he needed to escape to his wife, to talk with his parents and not wonder when she would be walking in the door. But he couldn't care. Even as he wanted to, he couldn't.

Then Alice kissed him, and something changed, he supposed, for better, it had seemed at the time, reawakening him to the world of caring for someone other for Bella. It wasn't until later that he realized it was definitely for worse that he and Alice let themselves get caught up in each other. Edward though it was like he was dropping into a pit with Alice, and there was no way out. They'd been going like this for over two years, behind everyone else's backs, and he felt like he was still falling, like he always would be. Even as he tumbled, the ground seemed to spiral even further away below him.

He thought he was isolated before. He knew better now. So this was it. Edward Cullen had discovered the meaning of true loneliness.


	2. Toujours Part II

**Toujours  
****Part II**

The sun's appearance was brief. Its light bounced off the stained windows so high above the rest of the world, filtering down to the street where the pavement shone multicoloured, like shattered glass. But the light was overtaken by gray storm clouds, and the beautiful moment died, eclipsed by darkness.

Edward lifted his face, scanning the people in the square. None seemed to have noticed the dim sparkle coming from himself and Bella, too busy watching the round windows at the top of the church tower as they lit up and cast their brightness on the area around them. He sighed, and kissed the cold skin of Bella's palm, holding her hand close to his face.

Her eyes were distracted, her lips pursed. "Who builds an abortion clinic near a Catholic Church?" she asked, and Edward heard fury in her voice.

"Hm? Why does it matter?" he asked. Edward couldn't care less about the stupidity of humans. He had Bella, his angel, with him, and she was the only thing that could ever capture his interest.

Bella shook her head and jerked her chin in the direction of the tiny clinic. A young girl was trying to get through the gate, but she was being heckled by a group of people who'd just gotten out of church for the morning. Edward was hardly listening to what they were saying. The girl was in tears. The churchgoers tried to soothe her, talking of the Lord's love of all people, talking of the wrongness of what she was about to do.

"I've nothing against God or religion," Bella spat, "But those people are just awful! Can't they see she's having a hard enough time without them there?"

Edward wasn't really listening to Bella's words– only her voice. He brushed a strand of hair from her face, thinking she looked adorable when she was angry.

"Edward?"

"Huh? I'm sorry, I missed that," Edward told Bella, feeling awful. He hadn't meant to drown her out. He'd just been distracted– by her, no less.

"Edward!" Bella exclaimed, eyes flashing. "Don't you care? At all?"

"No," he told her incredulously, and she turned, stomping away from him towards their car. He called after her, "It's horrible, Bella, but what can we do about it?"

It wasn't all that horrible. It was life. He had lived through worse.

* * *

There was no sense lingering in the past, especially not for Alice. Still she remembered, like an echo that bounced across the mountains of the world and eventually back to her, over and over again, a single moment months before she had found Edward alone on the mountain, before the vision, back when things were as simple as Jasper's smile and her brother's teasing. Bella's black eyes seemed dead, and her back was stiff like wet hair on a cold winter's day– Alice heard tiny crackling as Bella's rock hard skin shifted with each tiny movement.

"I just want him to be happy," Bella was saying. "No matter what the cost. I don't know what's wrong with him, Alice. He's been so depressed lately. I– I think I've made a mistake."

"Don't say that, Bella! You know he loves you! We all do. We need you. You and Edward adjusting still, that's all."

Forget that it had been 33 years since Bella had lost her humanity. Alice was convinced that the two of them just needed time. She wrapped her arms around her sister, for once fully noticing, perhaps because of Bella's stillness, how like hugging a dead body it was to embrace her family members.

"That's not what I was talking about, Alice."

"Oh?" Alice shifted her gaze to Bella's, studying the girl's expression.

"I–" Bella breathed in deeply, looking through the rain to where the large house their family lived in stood. Bella confessed, "I said something to him, and ever since he's been so... Oh, Alice, it's all my fault."

"What did you say?" Alice questioned, trying to keep her tone soothing. She didn't want to pry– only to help.

As the clouds rolled by so far above them, the sun's rays shot over the trees, briefly illuminating the air around Bella's head, and the sparkle that crossed her cheeks seemed, to Alice, a flush betraying her sister's keen embarrassment.

"The one thing I knew it would kill him to hear," Bella murmured, looking shamefully down at her hands. The clouds lapsed once more in front of the sun, and the two girls fell into darkness, and silence.

It was true that Alice had noticed something strange and distant in Edward lately. She had wondered what caused his quietness, and the anguish she often heard in the music he played. She saw the guilt clearly on Bella's face, just the way she'd seen Edward, so many times staring wistfully after his wife, and knew that whatever had happened, it wasn't a lost case. They both wanted to fix this, so it could be done.

She felt a bright spot hope dangling just ahead of her, needing only to take a few more steps before she reached it, a further foray into the future before it would be within her grasp.

"Bella," she declared determinedly, "This problem will be solved. Whatever I can do to make him happy, to make _you_ happy, I'll do it.

"I'm... _concerned_. We're... If I lose him again... I can't... Unless, of course, it's what's really best for him. Like I said, I just need his happiness."

"Don't be worried. The future doesn't scare me at all... I'll fix this, Bella."

Alice's voice held the promise of things to come, so it must have been true, even if she hadn't seen anything.

"Oh, Alice." Bella's voice was resigned, but still frightened. "I don't need you to save the world. Just give me a warning when you know mine's going to fall apart."

It wasn't going to happen. Edward wouldn't slip further into his depression, further away from her sister. Alice wouldn't let him.

* * *

"What's wrong with Edward lately?"

Alice looked up from her book abruptly. "What?" she asked in a tone that sounded dead. "What do you mean, Jasper?"

Jasper was leaning forward on the kitchen table where Alice sat reading. His face rested in one of his hands, and his eyes, focused intently on the tabletop, seemed wild, the wind pushing through the trees out the window matching them perfectly. He wrinkled up his brow, pursing his lips together.

"He seems so... But it's only when we're alone! I don't understand what's going on, Alice. I feel like I've done something wrong, something to make him angry with me. He acts normal enough, but I can _feel_ it, I can feel the estrangement, the unease he experiences when I enter a room... Alice," Jasper said, turning his pleading eyes on her. "You must know what's going on. You two are so close. What have I done? Don't say it's just Edward having issues because I know that it's _only me_ he's like this around."

It was a good thing the whole scene felt surreal, distant, because otherwise Alice knew she wouldn't have been able to suppress her guilt like this. Rain pattered loudly against the windows, and the wind seemed to scream past the house, as if the weather was trying to knock the whole structure down. But Alice barely noticed it. She only saw Jasper's desperate expression and felt a strange, calming effect that had nothing to do with him coming over her.

"I have no clue, Jasper," she told him, sounding like she was confessing a crime. She reached out and touched his shoulder. "Do you want me to talk to him?"

Jasper closed his eyes, burying his face in his hands. After awhile he said, "No, Alice, don't bother. I'm sure..." He looked up, forcing a tight smile, and Alice felt her calm little wall beginning to crumble– oh, God, he thought it was _his _fault something was going on with Edward. "He'll talk to me, when he's ready."

"Yes, of course he will." Alice's voice sounded cool, assured, even though she was beginning to lose her grip.

Jasper drifted from the room, and the wind and rain no longer sounded like they were taking their anger out on the house. Now it seemed like it was all for her, like the earth and sky themselves were conscious of her guilt.

* * *

Edward and Alice were home alone. He was in his room, listening to some quiet jazz music that Alice didn't recognize, but found herself tapping her foot to, marching out a staccato beat as she skipped across the floor. When she came in the door of his room, he didn't look up. He was toying around with some of his mother's old family jewelry, watching the way they sparkled in the light. Edward and Alice were still comfortable enough around each other to have easy chats. It wasn't like their time was consumed by secret liaisons. They weren't possessed. There was still time enough just to be friends.

Alice flopped down on his bed next to him, rolling onto her back and swinging her ankle in time to the music. Edward suppressed a smile as he glanced over to her, still digging through the box of jewels. Alice twisted around so she could look too, a happy, simple mood taking over them.

Edward rooted around the box, pulling out a pile of silver chains. With a sigh he began untangling them, murmuring, "It seems like no matter what I do with these they always get caught up in each other. There's almost no way to keep them apart." His fingers pried the chains out of each others' grip while Alice casually began separating the earrings into different piles. There was no particular reason– she just liked to see order in things, liked to put the pieces that matched together.

Then she saw the ring. "I thought you gave your parents' engagement ring to Bella," she said.

Edward looked down for a fraction of a second. "I did. I don't know what that one is. It's just always been there. I imagine it was a birthday gift or something."

Alice picked up the tiny golden band, admiring the little blue stone at the center. "It certainly is charming, isn't it?" she asked, and wondered why her voice sounded so wistful.

Edward pulled the last two chains free, sitting up cross-legged beside her, she still on her stomach with her ankles crossed in the air.

"Do you want it?" he offered in a tone that was unconcerned.

Yes she wanted it. But she couldn't take it. How could she wear this ring on her finger and not twist with guilt, even if she took it off in _his_ presence? Alice thought of the ring Jasper had given her when they married, and realized with a sad acceptance that it was the only one that had any place on her hand.

She put her palm out with the ring in its center, giving it back to Edward. He took it with a soft smile, and picked up one of the tiny chains, looping it through the tiny circular band. Edward leaned over, his hands fastening it around her ankle. His fingers brushed against her skin for longer than they needed to perhaps, and he let himself fall back onto the bed next to her.

"Don't wear it on your hand," he whispered simply, and Alice couldn't help but to lean forward. Edward was suddenly like the earth and she the moon circling around him. She couldn't escape his gaze. They were so close– but she twisted her head away, letting his lips touch her cheek softly instead of her mouth. He didn't mind. Edward understood just as well as she did why she turned away.

She left the room quietly, her feet still tapping along to the light jazz. With every step and every movement she heard the tiny clinking of the ring against its chain. It reminded her of her guilt, but she knew she wouldn't be removing it any time soon.

* * *

The car moved quietly along the freeway.

Bella clenched and unclenched her jaw. She loved Edward, but sometimes his insensitivity did nothing but appal her. How could he say so casually that he didn't care when he saw things like that? Bella remembered the look she had seen on the girl's face as she tried to get past the throng of people and into the abortion clinic. That girl must have been no older than 16. She imagined how it might have been for her, if _she_ were that age, if she were saddled with knowing that maybe she was going to have to take care of a child.

"Bella," Edward said suddenly, his voice pleading. "I'm sorry; I don't know why you're so upset, but you know I hate doing things to bother you."

Bella scoffed. "I was under the opinion you more or less didn't care about the plights of others."

"I always care about you, Bella," Edward told her fiercely. "You know that."

"So you just don't care about anyone else? That's it? You have no more room in your heart?"

Edward answered quietly. "That sounds about right."

Bella could have interpreted that as sweet; instead it made her angry. When had her Edward, the repentant, kind person she'd fallen in love with, turned so cold-hearted?

"What's happened to you, Edward?" she asked. "Have the years finally taken their toll?"

"What? Bella I don't under–"

Bella kept plowing right through Edward's questions, her temper flaring hotly. "Maybe the reason your family's different is because you're all so young. After all this time, have you finally become–"

She stopped, the air seeming deathly still. Edward couldn't read Bella's mind. But they both knew what she was about to say. The silence of the car was like a battlefield expecting more action, those moments of temporary relief where everyone tenses, waiting for someone else to make the next move.

"Edward," Bella gasped, her voice shaking. "I love you. And I will. Always. Forever. _Toujours_."

Edward glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes.

"And I love you."

His words rang with sincerity. Bella swallowed, knowing he had probably never said it and sounded more true, knowing that it was the last thing to be said. Ground Zero was silent, for good this time.

The last bomb really had been dropped. Bella looked out the window, wondering if he would ever forgive her, wondering if _I love you_ could ever be enough. She was isolated, wondering if all the time in the world could bring her this much loneliness ever again, wondering if she'd ever felt so much loneliness.

And sitting near enough to touch her, but feeling farther away than the moon, Edward wondered if the years really had turned him into a monster.


	3. Toujours Part III

**Toujours  
****Part III  
**

In the beginning, Alice wanted Edward to be happy– happy for Bella, for their family. For him. Edward was her best friend, her brother, there for her even when it hurt himself, always, _toujours_. She'd thought that bringing a twist to his lips would mend things.

Now Alice acknowledged that she wasn't doing this for Bella's sake. Something else held her to Edward. Something even a human could have crushed in their brittle hands.

What good, wondered she, was a heart that didn't even beat, when all it caused you was pain?

* * *

"I can't do this anymore," Bella said. She turned her back to Edward, looking anywhere but to his eyes.

"Bella–" Edward began, wanting to reach out to her, wanting to close the distance that was growing. It was like a meteor had hit, and he had gone flying to the other side of the hole it left. There was no going around it– he had to go straight through ground zero to get to Bella again, but he was too scared, the abyss to dark and wide for him to cross on his own. He dropped an arm that had been stretching towards her, listening to the sigh of the waves along the cold beach.

"I just..." Bella couldn't seem to finish her sentence. She faced him slowly. "I love you, Edward."

"I love you, too, Bella," he answered in a low, rough voice, remembering nights when Alice's lips were the warmest thing he'd felt in years. And remembering when Bella had taught him warmth after a century of being alone in the frigid cold.

Bella shook her head, sending her scent wafting his way. She told him without saying a word that something had changed. Her eyes were sad, seeming too wise for someone who had walked the earth for less than 50 years. It was like she knew ancient burden as well now as he did, even if she hadn't had the time to learn it. Her knees knocked together, and her shoulders seemed to slump in defeat– maybe Bella was the flame, and Edward had failed to protect _her_ from the wind and weather. In fact, maybe he had blown her out himself, with one gentle whoosh of his lungs. Rain dripped off her lips, and he wanted to take them in his mouth, to kiss her and hold her tightly to him.

He wanted to never let her go. But it was too late. He already had.

* * *

Alice found Edward on a beach many, many miles south of their house, curled into himself, chin resting on his knees. The rain on his face looked almost like tears, and the wind blowing against him made him look like he'd been swept in on some distant, magical breeze. But Alice knew better. Edward had traveled so close to Forks, Washington on no wind. She'd seen him jumping from the cliffs back home; she'd seen him swimming.

"She's leaving me," he croaked, eyes unfocused, lips still moving after he was done talking.

Alice folded her legs up beneath her, and leaned against Edward's side.

"She said that?" she asked. She hadn't seen this, hadn't seen Edward ending up in so much pain.

"No. She didn't have to say a thing. It's obvious enough."

"Oh, Edward," Alice sighed, wrapping her arms around him. He rested his face against her neck, flinching towards her. Now he was the tiny one, the one who seemed to fit perfectly within her arms. She stroked his hair, not saying anymore out loud, letting the wind whisper comforts to him instead.

She didn't need to say a thing, either, just like Bella. He already heard everything she could think to tell him. Everything she would never say out loud for fear of hurting him– Edward knew it all anyways.

* * *

What was it about their relationship that made it worth it? Where does love fade to? Is there a path that lovers walk upon, a chance that one day they might wander from the place where the grass was more worn than in others? As if the confusing light and the similar trees of a great forest could confuse you enough to separate you.

Alice thought, as she found herself pulling Edward– or perhaps herself being pulled– upon the sand, there was no getting lost within true love.

Edward and Alice had started beneath the soft light of an afternoon day, but found themselves now disoriented and afraid. Their hands upon each other, but too far away from one another to connect.

This she compared to being in another's arms: She remembered the guilt. She felt it afresh. The fear– the uncertainty about what would happen next, even when she could see it in front of her like Edward's face was now– was always there.

But at least with Jasper Alice always knew that she had never loved another like she loved this. And therein lie the answer.

Alice loved Edward because he was her brother.

His lips pressed against the inside of her thigh, and she knew that he was her brother no more.

* * *

"We're done," she murmured quietly.

Edward shifted away from Alice, the beach sand feeling colder than his own body.

He had lost Bella, and now he had lost his sister.

Edward's jeans scraped against his rock hard skin, grating like metal on metal as he redressed. Alice's naked body blended against the white of the sky– the dull, unceasing whiteness that stretched over the ocean and across the end of the world, somewhere too far away for even a vampire to see. Too far away for Edward to hear the thought of a single soul.

"What do I do with this?" she asked him above the sound of tiny snapping, tiny fingers straining to hold on, tiny links crushed forever.

He told her this: "It's yours. Do with it what you will."

Edward turned from Alice, and into the woods behind him. Onto the road less traveled.

_And that has made all the difference_.

Yet he was the one who made all the mistakes.

* * *

The leaves swayed in the breeze, waving at him like a friend seen from a distance. The vines hung, lifelines ready to be grabbed but uncomfortable to touch.

Other than Edward, no person was to be found here. The hunting was good here, but Edward wasn't thirsty. He only wanted one thing now– companionship.

But there was only himself. Himself and no one. His range of specialized hearing stretched out around him in a great circle that no one crossed into. A hoop. A band.

_0_. The never ending number, complete in itself. The thing he may as well have been– nothing upon nothing upon nothing. Complete in itself. And utterly empty.

* * *

"You can't leave here, Bella," Alice told her, reaching for the steering wheel. The car ghosted across the asphalt, down streets driven on everyday. Headlights glared along the pavement before them, revealing what lie beyond, and she watched intently while Bella stared into the fathomless depths of the rearview mirror, always watching what was already behind them.

"I can't stay. I can't do this."

"I won't lose another sibling."

"I love him too much to bear this, Alice. Edward–"

"To hell with Edward!"

The engine roared.

"Bella, it's no use leaving."

"You're wrong."

"Get your eyes off the damn mirror, Bella. Look ahead."

"I'm not you, Alice. Look ahead yourself."

"I see you coming back. I see you loving him enough to turn around when you realize you can't take the loneliness."

"You see me?"

"I always see the ones I love."

"Do you see Edward?"

Alice hesitated. "I see him, too." Along with the ones she loved. With her sister, she saw her sister's husband.

"Together?"

"And happy."

Bella turned the car around, confident in the vision Alice was telling her of.

"Somewhere in the future," Alice told her sister, her friend, the one she knew now she couldn't bear to lose– of the two of them. The one for whom she was saving the relationship. "I see you and Edward just the way you both want it to be."

The headlights illuminated the road ahead, the road that led to a house where Bella thought she and Edward repaired everything days, hours, months from now. She saw the future as a brightly lit path. She saw herself, back in Edward's arms.

But Alice saw no such thing.

* * *

Jasper stumbled upon Edward in the middle of the woods, forlorn, alone, letting the rain turn the ground beneath him into a great pit of mud, and letting himself sink down into the squishy ground. He thought this of Edward: He looked more like a wild animal than a person. He looked like a creature with no form of reason or love in his life.

Like a monster.

Edward glanced up at the sound of Jasper's approach– or maybe only at the sound of his brother's mind– Jasper seating himself on a fallen down tree nearby, unsure of which words were the right ones. He didn't even know why Edward was in this state, and besides, they had been so distant from each other lately...

Edward surprised himself by standing immediately and launching himself into his lap. The air was cold, the wind loud, and the rain a miserable, depressing downpour. Edward was right back to where he had begun, back to the fear and the hopelessness, the feeling that there was no way for him to reach out to the rest of his family. He was a tiny candle in the wind again, looking for a solid wall to surround him, but Bella was so far away and so disappointed with him.

Jasper wrapped his arms around Edward, and instantly everything was okay. Edward felt all the dark emotions that burdened him lately disappearing, rolling away like the last echoes of thunder. With Jasper there was no hard feelings– there couldn't be. Edward saw Jasper as more than his brother, more than one of the people he'd done so wrongly to. Jasper was a pillar of comfort and happiness, just waiting for Edward to find him.

"Jasper," Edward said, at the same time as he realized it, "I love you."

And in that he had his answer.

Edward wondered why he hadn't thought of this before, why turning to Jasper hadn't been his first choice the moment something plagued him. The very first time he felt concerned about him and Bella, why hadn't he gone to Jasper? -the one person who could push his feelings away just long enough to make Edward see straight. Things were so much clearer now that he could think without so many emotions in the way.

Of course he hadn't been worried about Emmett and Rosalie. He knew it would blow over. Rosalie and Emmett had argued before. They always came through for each other in the end.

And no wonder Bella distracted him so easily. They were– in vampire years at least– still newlyweds. His family wasn't bothered by it. They never had been; they never would be. It was like Alice was Jasper's first concern, and the rest of them came second– like Emmett was always Rosalie's first thought, and the same with Carlisle and Esme. None of them held his love for Bella against him, and none of them ever would.

Edward realized he hadn't been an isolated, dying flame who couldn't move for fear of going out– he was a lost child, too concerned with following the pretty butterfly to pay attention to the path. But, Edward realized now, the path wasn't the road through the woods– it was wherever he chose to walk, wherever his feet found ground and his heart a home.

That happened to be with Bella, and after Jasper had pushed aside all the guilt that came with it, he knew that it wasn't a problem.

"I need to go see Bella," he murmured.

Jasper released him, helping Edward to his feet once more. The wind slapped at Edward's face, but it wasn't an annoyance anymore– it was a guiding force, telling him to head to Bella, never to stop. The biggest mistake he could make would be to let her walk away from him. He'd done it once already. He couldn't do it again.

As if Edward hadn't already done enough damage.

* * *

"Alice?"

"Jasper," she whispered, leaning into him as he came in through the front door.

"What do you see? For Edward, I mean?"

She pulled back, looking into his golden eyes. "For Edward?"

"I'm worried." Jasper smiled tightly. "Our brother might be in even too deep for his own good. Things will work out, right? If our family lost Bella and Edward, we would only be part of what we should be."

"I suppose."

"Alice, do you know what number is totally never ending? You could write it forever without stopping."

"Zero."

"No," Jasper told her quietly. "Eight."

She looked to the photos on the wall. Herself and Jasper. Carlisle, Esme, Rose, Emmett, Bella... and Edward.

"Don't worry, Jasper," Alice sighed, her vision searching for the resolution they needed, and somehow, though she didn't understand why, finding it. "Your brother is going to be just fine."

* * *

The rain lands on her hair like shimmering diamonds– glowing almost as brightly as her smile. Months are no long period of time for their kind, but it was long enough for them; long enough to forget about the problems that plagued their relationship in earlier days. It seems to her that nothing ever happened at all. When Bella looked now, she saw a lighted trail behind her, the one it seemed she was supposed to walk all along. The road ahead was straight and true.

The past was around a bend too far back to worry over.

None of them talk about it, and none of them see two golden gazes sometimes meet over a piano or through a cracked window, ancient patterns of loneliness broken by a comradeship that died when the war ended. Bella sees the glory of victory, but never the sadness of those who gave up so much.

The only thing she sees is him– him and the way he seems to shine, just for her, sitting on the damp, cool earth atop the craggy mountain they always head to– him, her one and only, more fantastic, more everlasting and beautiful than the landscape itself.

And only few miles from this place, there are rocks. Rocks along a chilly beach where the wind blows through moss-covered trees. Somewhere amongst the rocks and the sand is a flash of metal and diamond and sapphire. Gold on blue; a band, a circle, a hoop, a song that never ends.

A ring.

It is the final remains of an open wound, one gaping like jaws below red eyes, waiting for blood. It never heals, but it fades a little more every decade as the years forget. It's a wound that never closes, whether you talk about it or you don't...

Because while it's true that people don't always linger in the past, the past always, _always_ lingers on.

Always. Forever. _Toujours._


End file.
